Frank Moore Musical Dance Jam Celebration, November 2, 2013

A MUSICAL DANCE JAM CELEBRATION FOR FRANK MOORE!

November 2, 2013, Temescal Art Center, Oakland

Saturday night’s Musical Dance Jam Celebration for Frank Moore was an amazing and wonderful opportunity to gather people together who knew and loved Frank, and really to continue that feeling of intimacy, depth and wide open possibilities that was Frank’s life work, and that now lives on in all of us. It was really so much like many of Frank’s performances at the Temescal Art Center, his performance home for the last 4+ years. We were always amazed at the wide range of people that would attend those performances, and it was really in keeping with the way Frank was with everyone in his life. He loved and was loved by so many different kinds of people, from so many different walks of life. So we had everyone from labor activists, micro-radio revolutionaries, neighbors from the block, long-time students and ex-students, friends from the SF punk scene, photographers, fans and attendees of Frank’s performances young and old, and even some young Greek musicians travelling through who just heard about Frank and this event, and wanted to join the jam! Not to mention Frank’s ENT doctor and friend of three decades, Rich and physical therapist and friend for just as long, Francine. 

Linda, Erika and Megan went around the room, which quickly filled, asking everyone how they knew Frank and what he meant to them ... the responses were powerful, deep and funny! Frank’s impact was deeply felt. It seemed also a way for all of these different people in Frank’s life to experience firsthand the impact Frank made on such a wide range of people, and through so many different avenues ... Frank’s internet station, LUVeR, his performances, his running for President in 2008, his live music jams in punk clubs, his trips to the doctor and hospital stays, etc.! We were really happy that the spirit of Frank’s performance and life flowed on seamlessly into this celebration.

And of course then there was the music jam and dance! The music really started with Tomek and Kene-J (aka Frank’s “Son”) laying down a beautiful deep track of music throughout the entire night as people talked about Frank. And after Kene-J said some words of his own about Frank, Linda asked him to do two songs, the first a rap that we had not heard before, which seemed to be about or inspired by Frank, and the second a recent favorite, “To Be Free”, which Kene-J said was inspired by his experiences of Frank’s performances, and which we first heard at the August 2012 “Risk For Deep Love” performance. We felt Kene-J’s deep love for Frank in these songs. At some point, the Greeks joined Tomek and Kene-J in this ongoing jam. And after Erika read Annie Sprinkle’s audience-participation message for Frank, in which Annie had everyone in the room doing a short eroplay ritual tickling each other’s arms, the dance jam began!

It was a beautiful erotic jam of melting bodies and rhythmic soft waves of music ... Almost everyone picked up an instrument to join the jam and play along as Linda, Erika and Megan took off each other’s clothes and danced nude erotically as slides of the history of Frank’s performances projected on their bodies. Some of the others in the audience also took off their clothes. And after an erotic tickling session, the three went and “got” the audience, holding and rocking each person in the room. This amazing jam then segued into a sing-a-long led by Captain Fred, a long time friend and collaborator from the micro-radio movement. He passed out the lyrics to “With A Little Help from My Friends”, and the whole room sang it together, backed up by the musicians. It was a great way to “end” the night, although of course as Kene-J pointed out earlier when everyone clapped for his performances, “Frank always said ‘No clapping’!” ... because clapping is as if something has ended, and Frank always talked about how the performances don’t really “end”. We all feel that here. 

Theremin Barney of Fluff Grrl, who was there with Annie and Mike, said at one point that he felt that Bob Madigan and Frank created “environments” ... they created around them a space in which people could come together and be together in ways that were outside of the normal, and that didn’t seem possible without them, and that he missed this so much with Bob’s passing, and now Frank. But as the night went on, and so many people asked for the performances and Frank’s work to continue, it was even more clear that there really isn’t an end ... that Frank’s work continues in us. This was a confirmation of what we have already felt. As Frank told Linda a few days before he died, kicking all of our asses to enjoy everything, even the idea of him dying ...“We have an amazing life, and it will just continue!”